I'm all over the art spectrum today.

Hello Readers!

You better settle in for a bit. I have a lot to say today.

All the snow melted except for a patch out behind the burnt house. The temperature is in the mid 70s (F) right now so I suspect the remaining snow will have melted by the time the sun goes down later this evening. 

Good Riddance to Winter, I say!

The cats were driving me and Fred dog a bit nuts for the past week or so. Tippy and Murray were in heat and it was more than a bit noisy at times! Fred was a might short with the felines and the felines were quite vocal about their plight. Lola's fat self sits and ignores all the ruckus as though it is of no concern to her.

Poor Tippy was hollering for "Hairrrrrrreeeeeeeee" for days! I kept telling her Harry wasn't coming and to just forget about it! She hollered on. Murray made noises I can't even begin to spell.

They both came home from the vet this morning. Ma fetched their furry hides home. They seem to be doing just fine after their surgeries yesterday. No kittens for us anytime in the future! And Harry is a distant memory.

I've been holed up at home with the muse working overtime! 

You'll understand as you read this post!

This stuff isn't posted in the order in which it was made, it's posted as it came out in the filing system. Organization is not my strong suit!

We'll start off with some altered envelopes.

They're a tad dark but a white pen will show up nicely on them for mailing.

The following zentangles are all done on a magazine page. The envelopes above are also done on a single magazine page.

I play hours of mahjongg on facebook on a daily basis and some days I can't help but do something with all those numbers. I have a couple notebooks full of pages of nothing but game scores from online games I've played. 

I turned numbers into art. You can call it whatever you want though.

I was going for an overall design with the intention of turning the pages into something other than a page out of a magazine. ELLE magazine in this case. All of the pages from the same issue.

I cut this one out in the shape of the design.

Just black sharpie on magazine page.

I think this is my favorite of them all. The circle with the writing around it to the left on the page says YOU exasperate me always. We all know someone like that! I think this one will end up in my cereal box book. I showed you all the beginnings of the cereal box a couple posts back. It will be a long time before the cereal box book is complete so don't expect to see it for awhile.

I rather like this one too. 

Black and red sharpie and white paint pen on magazine page.

This one will end up as an altered envelope more than likely.

I like the background on this one but it isn't a favorite. This one and the lady in the pink polka dotted dress will end up in the cereal box book I think.

I entered the Jar of Stars swap over at AFA. I've been working on them for the last 24 hours or so. I did have a sleep in there somewhere, but stars are on the muse's radar!

Wooden star painted with fingernail polish and then glazed with Modge Podge Dimensional Magic.

Another wood star done the same as the red, white and blue one.

And yet another wooden star with a fingernail polish and black sharpie flower covered in Dimensional Magic. 

That's some really cool stuff! This is my first venture using it.

I still need to do the back of the wooden stars. Probably more of the same as the front plus my info.

Work In Progress

beaded yellow felt star

5 point origami star

magazine paper

This star looks really complicated but it's one of the easier origami folds I've run across. Putting it together is the tricky part, though not difficult once you get the gist of it.

I'm going to make some of these with one dollar bills for my grandsons for Christmas this year. No, it is not too early to be thinking about it! Dollar bill stars would be a tad larger than this one is.

14 point origami star

scrapbook paper

I made this star at the end of 2012. I made five or six of these stars. A couple of them fell apart and the pieces are still apart! I'll glue this one together before it heads out with the rest of the stars for the swap.

copper wire star pendant with plastic blue horse bead.

This pendant was an experiment. I added the horse bead cause I cut the wire too short for the star to end up in the bail. The ends barely met! The bead took care of that!  Along with a bit of quick drying glue.

Watecolor Paper 3D Star

painted with fingernail polish

teabag folded star

book page

I really like this star. I made a boatload of these late in November of last year. This one was made at that time.

copper wire and glass seed bead star

My least favorite of the stars made.

The wire this star is made out is salvaged from an electric motor of some kind. I found a box of salvaged copper wire in my son's garage the last time I was down to visit him. I snagged a chunk of it! It's a nice color. Not all copper wire is the same color. 

Snake Book

I bought four of these little 2 year calendars at the Dollar Store the other day for 15 cents a piece. I took the calendars out of the covers and then altered the covers and put new paper in them and then put the cover back in the plastic cover the calendar came in. The original cover was just a thin cardstock  affair. I put some text paper on and then put pink tissue paper over the text, using white glue. The snake is painted with fingernail polish atop the tissue paper. The only problem is that it doesn't close properly. I've got it under the press right now and will leave it there a few days in hopes it will flatten the spine a tad. I sewed the new pages (white copy paper) in the cover with the pamphlet stitch.

My book press is actually three very thick books that have a spot on the book shelf in the hallway. One of them is a book about aviation history, another is an encyclopedia of animals and the other is a nursing manual. The nursing manual is almost 5 inches thick. The other two about three inches thick. The three books make a great press. I have sheets of plastic between the books as well so that numerous things can go in the press at once if need be. 

Lesser Goldfinch

Postcard

fingernail polish on cardstock

Some Thoughts on the Use of Fingernail Polish as an Art Medium

1. It stinks to high heaven! Ventilation is encouraged.

2. It comes in LOVELY colors covering the entire spectrum.

3. It blends nicely. Regardless of brand, you can paint one over the other so long as the lower layer has dried first. I use a regular paint brush unless I'm covering a large area with one color.

4. Some colors are transparent. The transparency can be a nice touch.

5. It is inexpensive and you probably have a few bottles already.

6. A little bottle will cover a large area. One bottle will last through several projects if you work on a small scale as I do.

7. The smell eventually goes away on your finished project.

8. It's some tough stuff!

9. The more expensive the polish, the nicer the coverage. You don't have to buy the expensive stuff but don't pass it up if you find some at a yard sale or thrift store.

10. Clean up requires some acetone which stinks as badly as the polish. Acetone is not expensive either. Look for acetone at the hardware store in the paint section. You can get a quart of it for about $4. Or you can buy it in 10oz bottles for $1.75 at Dollar General. 

11. Acetone evaporates quickly so your rinsing tub should have a cover.

12. Be careful what brush you use as some synthetic fibers will not play nicely with acetone. 

Ink Flowers

postcard

I got a new set of pens at the Dollar Store the same day I found the calendars at 90% off. Bright colorful pens. 

Ball point pen on cardstock

Underwater Scene

postcard

fingernail polish on cardstock

I do like the look of fingernail polish when used as an art medium! 

Zen Postage

ATC

markers and postage stamp on cardstock

Orange Elephant

postcard

ball point pen on cardstock

I have a few works in progress, in progress. This is the guts of a new book. This started out as a newspaper flyer that arrives in my mailbox once a week. 

I didn't take a picture of the other six pages (larger than these here) that are hanging on the line in the closet where I pinned them yesterday to dry. We'll talk about the ones in the picture here. I cut the pages 8x4 inches so I'd end up with a 4x4 inch book. They're painted white with wall paint...like you'd use to paint your walls! Some of them have tissue paper squares adhered with that same white paint. They each have two coats of paint. They need another layer of something...onion skin paper, tissue paper, gift wrap...something thin to make them a tad more sturdy and then I'll put some random papers with them for the page block. I'm still deciding on what the covers will be.

Golden Goose in Paradise

postcard

fingernail polish 

I always have a piece of paper, paper towel, something to wipe the brush on when I'm painting. Doesn't matter if it's paint, ink, fingernail polish or ketchup (there's an idea), I always have a waste paper handy. This is the result of the Lesser Goldfinch postcard and the other fingernail polish works in this post.

Owl Drawing

markers on orchard paper

3x4 inches

I'm not sure when this owl was drawn. Sometime last month. I found it buried in the pile of finished artwork on my desk and knew I hadn't shown it off yet.

Owls are hot on the muse's radar!

Brett

ATC

markers on book page

Abstract Eyes

Drawing

markers on textured paper

3x4 inches

I said I had a few WIPs on the table. This is another of them.

My plan is to have an alphabet book done for my granddaughter for her 4th birthday come August. (Is that child really already 4?!!)

The ABC Book will be about 6 inches square. I'm not that far into the book to be honest. Four letters an alphabet does not make! The drawings are done on plain copy paper in markers. 5 in squares.

You will see more of the alphabet book in the near future!

Aaron

ATC

markers on cardstock

Bottle Cap Junk Magnets

I played around with my gold sand, some painted beer bottle caps, a jar of junk and some dimensional magic. The resin isn't quite dry in the picture so some of them are a bit cloudy. These were pretty easy to do. The picture doesn't show at all any of the details. That gold sand is pretty cool. I'm not certain what the purpose of this gold sand was originally. My mother found it at a garage sale. It's in a jelly jar. It appears to be sand, spray painted gold. It's a very coarse sand. Reminds me of miniature gravel. A whole 12 oz jar full of it! She paid a quarter for it. I've had it for years and have used it numerous times, especially on the fish pictures I do on large canvases. It was a nice filler for these bottle caps. There are beads, broken jewelry, sea shells, doodads, ect in the bottle caps. I'll slap a magnet on the back of them once the DM dries in a couple of days.

Another little book. That's the inside of the back cover you're looking at there. Magazine paper adhered to chipboard. The fronts of both covers have a bit of fingernail polish on them to dress up those magazine pictures! 

You'll get to see it in the next post. It's all ready to be sewn together as soon as I put some holes in the covers to correspond with the holes already in the page block.

Yoga Dog

ATC

markers on cardstock

Watercolor Paper 3D Star

painted with fingernail polish

The dots look red on my monitor but I assure you they are bright pink in real life.

I couldn't get this watecolor paper star to stay glued together. The lines weren't scored just right and it's a bit cattywompus. There's a button magnet inside this one so I'm going to work on it some more before I say to heck with it! I think it's salvageable.

I found the prefect tool for scoring lines in paper. It's a dress maker's tracing wheel. There are two different kinds of dressmaker's tracing wheels. One of them has teeth and the other is smooth. Either would work for scoring paper. I used the smooth one to score the lines in the 3D watercolor paper stars. I have two smooth wheeled tracing wheels and one with teeth. Three days ago, I didn't know I owned a smooth one, let alone two of them! I found one of them in a basket in the cutting room and the other one in the tool bucket on the kitchen table. Both within hours of each other. The watercolor paper stars were destined to be!

I've made more cranes since the last post also. I don't know how many ...10, maybe 20 of them. Been a few days since I made any. I'll show you the whole mess of them in the next post. Maybe the flock will have grown by then.

I guess that's all I have this time!

Thanks for taking a look, having a read!

Come back again!

Remember....

Be good to one another!

it matters!

Peace

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